Re: American Idiots

To reiterate what Morpheus said:

Rights exist by virtue of being born. They are not provided for by another man (though they can be taken away by another man). These are life, liberty, and free will. Nobody “gives us” those – we all have them the instant we arrive in this world. They can be taken away: another person can kill us, we can be enslaved, and society can prohibit us from exercising our will.

Any other so-called rigths, like health care, education, and food are not provided by nature. Nature does not heal the sick, put food on your table, or provide shelter. Someone else must do the work of providing them; they can only be provided from one man to another. There are only two ways one man can get something from another: 1) through a free, voluntary exchange or 2) By force. I suppose there is a third way: charity, but that could be argued to be a subset of 1.

Therefore, those things are not rights, because nobody has a right to force another man into an exchange he does not desire. The only way they can be rights is if a group of people is deprived, by force, of their natural rights.